


Excalibur

by Koren M (CyberMathWitch)



Category: Witchblade (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch/pseuds/Koren%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She had the sense that maybe the two of them were the only two real people in the world and that was one of the least comfortable thoughts she'd ever entertained."</p><p>A theft from a private collection adds new complications to Sara Pezzini's world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excalibur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shealynn88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/gifts).



"We got a case, Pez," Jake strolled through the squad room and scooped up his jacket as he passed their desks.

Sara jumped up and followed him as he started down the hall. "How come Dante briefed you and not me?"

"I was handy - the call came in while I was going over some records on a drug bust I was part of last year. It's up for trial in a few weeks."

"So what's the story?" Sara didn't wait for Jake to offer the keys, just held out her left hand while she gripped the door handle in her right.

"There's a collector on the upper East side who called in this morning and reported a stolen sword." He noticed Sara's eyes sharpen. "Thought that would get you interested."

"Please tell me it's not Kenneth Irons." Sara jerked open the driver's side door of the standard police issue coupe with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

"Nope. It's a woman, name's Jacqueline Quinn."

"Never heard of her."

"Me either, but she's apparently loaded. Based on how Dante reacted, I'd hazard to guess she's made a pretty big donation to the Widows and Orphans fund. Or something."

"Great. So we get to play kiss ass instead of doing our jobs?"

"Something like that." Jake grinned at her, and Sara couldn't help responding in kind.

*****

Jacqueline Quinn's home, which seemed to double as her offices, was the penthouse floor of a tall, sleek building that screamed money and affluence. The lobby decor was all slick modern, but when the elevator spit them out onto the restricted floor, it turned into dark burgundy and warm woods. A silent, stoic sort of man (who looked the part of the quintessential English butler) showed them to a small drawing room where they turned down the offer of tea and stared at uncomfortable looking furniture Sara thought ought to be in a museum.

The woman herself arrived three or four minutes later. She was slight, with white blond hair that made her age hard to determine piled professionally on top of her head. Her suit was black, with forest green accents and tastefully simple gold jewelry. On her lapel was a pin shaped like a crossed sword and shield.

"Good morning, thank you for arriving so promptly. I'm Jacqueline Quinn."

"I'm Detective Pezzini, and this is Detective McCarty. I understand you're missing an item from your collection?"

Jacqueline waved them towards the intimidating chairs, and sat on the edge of one herself, as it if was a normal sofa. "Please, sit. Yes, I am missing an item. A most important item, in fact. The centerpiece of my collection."

Sara felt a chill run down her spine, and the Witchblade warmed against her wrist. She tugged the sleeve of her jacket down a little to make sure the eye was covered up and asked, "What do you collect?"

"Artifacts related to King Arthur. Not the mythological, fanciful Arthur of Mallory and White, but the true Arthur. How familiar are you with Arthur and his knights?"

"Just basic high school English stuff, I'm afraid," she admitted.

"Well, the legends in the great Romances probably aren't terribly accurate. There's very little agreement on who he truly was or even _if_ he really existed, but I've devoted my life to researching him and I believe he did. It's likely that he was a Celtic tribal chief who existed just after the Romans abandoned Britain about 500 A.D. I've funded archaeological and historical research all over England and France trying to find out everything I can about him. Three years ago, I funded a dig to excavate the remains of a village among Roman ruins and we recovered a rather extraordinary sword. It wasn't of a Roman design, nor of any known pattern from the Celts in the area, but it matches key aspects of the mythic sword Excalibur."

"You found... Excalibur?" Sara couldn't keep her eyebrow from winging up skeptically.

"There's no real way to authenticate it yet. I've spent the last ten months getting various experts to test the age, metal, workmanship, and so on, but the results are all pending or circumstantial."

"Any idea who'd want to take it? You said it was on display - was it any secret that it was here?"

"No, no. No secret. I've made my collection open to whatever scholars of history and Arthurian legend might wish to view it. The more minds working on this puzzle, the better, I say. But I can't really think of anyone that it would benefit. Because there's no provenance prior to the dig, it can't even be insured for more than a few thousand dollars at most. Almost every other piece I have on display in my house and gallery are worth far, far more on paper. At the moment, its importance is in its possibility, and the personal value I place on it, not on any known monetary value."

"Mrs. Quinn, when was the last time you saw the sword?"

"Yesterday, just after tea. I make it a point to walk through the main hall were it's displayed before retiring to my personal chambers for the evening. I locked the doors with a key code, then finished activating the alarm systems with a voice code. There's top of the line security throughout my entire home, detective. Yet nothing went off to alert us of the theft."

*****

"I don't like it," Sara said flatly as she and Jake climbed back into their car. This time, she was letting Jake drive. She felt too preoccupied turning the evidence over in her head to navigate Manhattan traffic during the lunch hours.

"Which part?" Jake asked.

"All of it. Someone good enough to break into that system, but they aren't good enough to know what's valuable and what's not?"

"So you think she's playing us? But she said it wasn't even insured, yet. If you're gonna stage a robbery for the insurance money, it makes more sense to steal something with said insurance."

"Yeah." A thought occurred to her. "I need to get some more information on Excalibur and that dig site. Drop me off at the  
station, will ya? I've got a contact that might have something on it."

*****

As soon as they were back at the precinct, Sara grabbed her helmet and her bike and headed to Gabriel's place. She passed easily through the outside security, and the corner of her mouth tipped up as she got close enough to hear the music pounding through the hallway.

"Hey, Sara. What brings you out to my neck of the woods?"

"A case, actually."

Gabriel looked a bit puzzled. "Oh?"

"Know anything about Excalibur?"

Gabriel's eyes lit widened. "You mean like the legendary sword of King Arthur Excalibur? That Excalibur?"

"Yeah, that'd be the one. I've got a woman uptown that thinks it's been stolen. From her private collection."

"Dime a doz-" Gabriel started, then froze. "Wait. What's her name?"

"Jacqueline Quinn. Know her?"

From the look on Gabriel's face, Sara knew immediately that he did. It was impossible for him to keep much of anything from her, these days. She almost wished she could talk him into a game of poker  
sometime.

"Yeah. Yeah, she contacted me last year about some things they found at a British dig site. Some cups and bowls, old coins, and a few weapons. She kept hedging around 'something big' until I basically told her to put up or shut up and she caved and told me about this sword she'd found."

"Did you get photos? A description? Something that could pin down a value? Because let me tell ya, right now, all I've got is a worthless piece of metal floating around out there somewhere."

"She didn't get it appraised?" Gabriel had turned away and was pulling up several screens on the computer.

"Said she didn't. That no one could really do much with it since it didn't have a provenance beyond the dig."

"Well, yeah. And like I started to say earlier, claims about Excalibur are a dime a dozen and pretty much guaranteed to get you  
shown the door at any kind of reputable insurance or appraisal firm."

"So what about you?"

Gabriel smiled. "She talked to me last year after they got to the states. Said she'd seen the site, thought I might have a more open mind. I guess Lords and Sothebys both really raked her over the coals."

"Did you get a look at it? And could you tell if it was genuine?"

He kicked back in his chair, but his expression was serious. "You've gotta understand, this kind of thing - it's right up there with the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny. Or the Witchblade. Only way more people know about Excalibur. That's the thing, there're so many different histories and explanations about it and absolutely no real evidence."

He was staring at her hands, and Sara suddenly realized she was twisting the Witchblade in circles around her wrist.

"It's bothering you, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Ever since we started this case."

His eyes were positively dancing, and she thought (not for the first time) that if he were just a little older, or if she were just a little less uptight... she shook it off and refocused on what he was saying to her.

"One theory is that the Witchblade and Excalibur were linked. There're some legends that describe Morgaine - Morgan Le Fey, that is - as having a powerful weapon she tried to use to defeat Arthur."

"But in the Legends, Morgan's the bad guy."

"Well, yes and no. She's against Arthur, but some people see her as the true leader who was usurped when Uther killed her father and married her mother. She was Arthur's sister, but practiced what a lot of people call "the Old Ways" - non-Christian beliefs. It all depends on how you look at history."

"So what does the Witchblade's history say about it?" She was back to fidgeting with it. It almost felt like the stone itself was vibrating with anticipation of... something.

"That's where it gets _really_ interesting. Last known location before 600 A.D. is with the warrior queen Boudicca. She fought against the Romans and had a crazy good win record, until one day they defeated her, completely. There are a couple of reports that the Roman general seized her weapon, but no one has ever reported that he _used_ it. There's no more report of any Witchblade activity until the Morgaine legends after the fall of Londinium."

Sara could feel a headache brewing behind her eyes and thanked Gabriel before making a quick exit. The drive home passed by in a blur as all the pieces ran through her head and mixed and mingled with the half-formed dreams and memories from the Witchblade. Gabriel was more right than he probably realized, she decided. It was like now that she'd been mentioned, Sara could feel Morgaine in there somewhere, waking up. It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation.

*****

Smoke and ash choked the air. Londinium was burning, and Uther reveled in it. He could hear Roman screams, and the sound brought him a fierce pleasure. They had deliberately waited until only a few soldiers remained so that the odds were heavily in their favor, but he'd decided long before that it wouldn't make this victory any less sweet. When one of his men had expressed distaste at such an underhanded attack he'd silenced the man, permanently. There were more warriors where that one had come from, and he refused to have any dissension among his people.

The General's quarters were just ahead of him, a once palatial home, now charred and broken, but the central chambers were still intact as Uther had ordered. His scouts had told him that his treasure lay there carefully locked away from curious eyes, and he could feel it calling out to him.

He'd been weened on stories of the fall of Boudicca and of the magical weapon she'd once wielded that had been stripped from her by the Roman dogs. By the rather abrupt end of his childhood he was completely obsessed. It whispered to him in his dreams, both sleeping and waking. Now It was almost his.

The box was heavy, cold iron. Uther turned it over in his hands a few times, then unceremoniously bashed it against the heavier iron door until the lock gave. Opening the lid, he brought silver and red fire into view.

He had to admit, had Merlin not prepared him for this, he would've been angered by such a simple, *pretty* thing, more suited to a woman than a warrior, even though Boudicca had been both.

"Lord Uther," Roan called and he looked up across the courtyard. Roan was standing in a door way, hold a woman by the arm and a small girl by the hair.

"And who might this be?" Uther asked, leering at the woman. She spat at his feet and he backhanded her across the mouth. He was about to order her be thrown to the rest of the men when he noticed how fine the jewelry around her neck and wrist was.

"I'll only ask you one more time. Who are you?" Roan's hand tightened on the little girl and she gasped. The woman looked briefly at her daughter, then relented. "I am called Igraine."

"Ah. The generals' prized mistress. This is fortunate, indeed. Take them back to our camp, and put them in my tent. I'll deal with her later."

As Roan dragged them away he looked around at the still burning fort with the bracelet clutched tightly in his hand. Satisfaction curled in his belly at the destruction. Londinium was the last stumbling  
block between him and his dreams of power. Now that he had the people, the countryside, and the weapon, he would be unstoppable.

*****

Sara woke in a cold sweat, barely able to breathe and with her heart racing. She was expecting smoke and fire, but her apartment was clear and slightly cool thanks to the window that was left open. There'd been fire in the dream, though. Fire, and hard hands that pulled her hair and bruised her arms and then darkness. She remembered seeing a man but so much of it was shadows. The only clear thing had been the firelight licking across silver and red, a stone like an eye that drew  
her in. It was chased with images of a dark-haired boy, strangely familiar but someone Sara had never seen before. She rested her head against her knees and let the memory-dream wash over her. They were something she was learning to manage and seemed to come more easily and leave sooner if she just let them work their way through her system.

An image of the man trying on the bracelet.

Screams.

Fire and rending metal, feeling like she was being torn into pieces.

The simultaneous sensation of waiting, quietly trapped and remarkably peaceful, and also raging, storming to get out, get justice, fight back.

Then the thread of calm seemed to blink out of existence, as if she couldn't find those memories anymore. She let out a long breath and lay back down, hoping to get at least another hour or so of real sleep before her shift.

*****

Sara spent the first half of the next day chasing down lab techs and computer geeks to try and help her make sense of the remarkable _lack_ of evidence showing up at the crime scene. No prints, no scuffs, no fibers, nothing, just the knowledge that someone had to have taken the piece out of the collection. After work she found herself skipping the pool hall and beer and going straight for her bed. She wasn't sure if it was exhaustion or curiosity. She knew that if it weren't for the impressions she was getting from the Witchblade, she'd have thrown the case over to fraud already. Jake didn't get why she was so worried about it, but she couldn't very well admit to him she was afraid some kind of super-powerful relic might have been unleashed on the unsuspecting population.

The dreams were more vivid the second night. She saw the girl being trained to use the Witchblade by the bearded man, and the dark haired boy looking on quietly. Flashes of Uther, usually in a temper, always greedy for some evidence of the Witchblade's power and Morgaine's obedience.

Sara felt ridiculous thinking of them as Arthur and Merlin and wondered if she was careening towards another near break-down of reality like she had right after Danny died.

"You're not crazy, Pez. We've been over this."

"Danny." She sat up in bed and turned so her feet were on the floor. "But it's King Arthur and Merlin, for god's sake!"

"Yeah. Well, the people they were supposedly based on. The best way your subconscious can process them. Memories and the mind, they're subjective, Pez. How much is what really happened, and how much is what we perceived was happening? The Witchblade's as prone to that as anyone else."

"I can't quite make sense out of it all yet, and this case sure as hell isn't going anywhere fast."

"They're more connected than you know. To you."

Sara rolled her eyes. She really, really wished she could have the normality of being able to offer him a beer. On an internal shrug she decided she could still have one herself.

"I get that this kid I keep seeing, Morgaine, is a wielder. But there's something really weird in there, too. I keep getting this horrible heat and tearing feeling, but it's not her memories. It's like it's coming from the Blade itself."

Danny seemed to turn on his frustratingly calm face, the one that said she was on to something but he wasn't going to spoon feed her the answers. "More happened that night than the Blade getting a new wielder," he finally relented. "What else do you remember?"

Sara closed her eyes. What else was there? It wasn't the first time she'd tried to deliberately evoke some of the memories she got from previous wielders, but practice didn't seem to make it any easier. The tent, the man taking the Blade away... there were years that seemed to blur together in a mix of pain, anger, and frustration, for both Morgaine and the blade but they didn't seem to be one and the same. Then that searing pain from the blade itself, but Morgaine didn't seem to be aware of it.

"She's older, the Blade's still there and they're both under Merlin's power. There's a boy, Uther's son."

"Arthur," Danny supplied. Sara flinched by kept going.

"He seems almost familiar, like he's someone I've met."

"It'll come to you, Pez. Maybe when you least expect it. Until then, see what else you can find out - about both the Witchblade and Excalibur."

*****

Another trip to Gabriel netted a surprising lack of information. She'd started to rely on him always being able to come up with the info she needed.

Her cell phone rang as she was driving back to the precinct and she answered it without looking at the caller ID.

"Sara." Nottingham's voice was jarring to her ear, mostly because she hadn't been expecting it.

"Nottingham. How's the Master doing?" she quipped, mostly to get a dig in. "Hey," she pushed on, not letting him get a word in edgewise, "you wouldn't happen to know if your Keeper has any interest in Arthurian artifacts, would you?"

"You should join us for dinner tonight. It may prove enlightening."

"Hey, sorry - I've already got plans. Tell him nice try, tho-"

"He's not asking. I am inviting you. Dinner will be served at 8, but if you come early there will be time to talk about things. Like Excalibur."

"Hey!" she exclaimed, but she was already talking to dead air.

*****

It had taken her half an hour to get turned around and back towards the castle of a house Irons inhabited. He'd said come early - she didn't imagine he'd meant this early, but would he really expect her _not_ to show up as soon as she got a call like that?

It was painfully obvious to her now that Nottingham had stolen the sword, which would also explain the lack of any evidence... he was damn good, she knew. So if Irons had it, what did that mean? He had to know that she didn't have enough to hang him on the theft, not with the team of lawyers he could bring to bear. So this wasn't about the investigation, but about the blades themselves.

No one was waiting at the front door, but it was thrown open. All the security seemed to be gone. Her boots echoed on the marble floor and she felt the Witchblade expand and form the gauntlet around her hand. She shifted her wrist automatically to balance the weight of the blade as it extended. The main hall led straight for Irons's "throne room" as she liked to think of it, and that was where the found the two of them.

Nottingham had Excalibur in his hand, the point of the blade at the base of Irons's throat.

"Good evening, Sara," Ian said softly, as if he was answering the door for a date.

"What the hell is going on, Nottingham?" she demanded.

"He's gone mad!" Irons started, but a look from Ian and his mouth closed.

"I found it. It's been so long, but Excalibur returns."

Memories slammed into her mind and she realized where she'd recognized the boy's eyes. And that opened the flood gates. Images poured out so fast she couldn't make sense of all of them, and she felt reality slipping away.

*****

Morgaine emerged from Merlin's tent, stumbling from exhaustion. He still wouldn't let her keep the glove, no matter how much she tried to convince him. It whispered and pressed against her mind, coaxing her, explaining to her so much _more_ than what little the men actually knew about it.

Arthur was waiting for her near the blacksmith's yard like he often did, staring at the jagged piece of metal growing from the stone.

"It's gotten bigger, again. It's growing, Morgaine."

"Perhaps," she allowed. He was obsessed with it, ever since he'd seen it become lodged there while the blacksmith and Merlin had attempted to reform the glove they now gave her. Arthur had actually watched it happen, she'd only heard it screaming in her mind.

"It looks more and more like a sword each day, doesn't it? I wonder if I could use it as a sword? Would it have power like the Gauntlet does?"

"I... wouldn't know. Arthur-" but he was already reaching out, grasping what was starting to look remarkably like a hilt, and then he was pulling it out and it was a sword.

Then the sword woke up.

*****

"He was wrong, Ian. He was wrong then, and he's wrong now." Like a tumbler in a lock falling into place, she Remembered what  
 _Merlin_ had done back then, how he'd pitted them against each other, pitted Witchblade against Excalibur, pitted Arthur against Morgaine. How he'd manipulated them both in an endless attempt to try to control the elemental forces of the weapons they commanded. Those memories were overlaid with the much sharper memories of Ian's life, of the constant conditioning and training from Irons, from the military, attempts to turn him into the perfect, docile yet deadly servile assassin. All of it started to build around them, brought together for the first time in almost 2000 years.

Ian stepped away to stand across from her, stance wide and stable, Excalibur held parallel to the floor, while Irons sat in his chair, immobile in the frozen space-time that now surrounded them. In the distance, as if it was just outside the stone walls, Sara could hear the clash of metal, the baying of hounds, and the screams and cries of the battlefield. Ripples in the air revealed and concealed their armor as the currents of the past and present streamed by them.

"He's just like Merlin, Ian. The only power he has over you is what you believe he has. _You_ have Excalibur, not him. _You're_ the true wielder of that part of the Witchblade now. It doesn't want it back," she said with sudden realization. The blade in her hand seemed at best indifferent, and at worst slightly antagonistic towards the missing piece of itself. She could feel echoes of a wrenching, but then a sense of freedom, as if the part that had been broken away was some restraining force or order that had been keeping the Witchblade in check.

His face was flashing back and forth, Ian's, Arthur's, Ian's, Arthur's. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a similar  
change overlaying Irons, but it wasn't important. Only the change shaping the man before her was. She watched him as he struggled - literally - to hold his head up. As long as she'd known him, he'd looked down, deferred, to Irons as his Lord and Master, to her as the Wielder. He moved as though a hand were reaching down and fightingagainst him, and then...

Click.

There was a wrenching inside her, around her, before her. The armor held true, no longer amorphous but real, and Arthur's face retreated and Ian's showed clearly, as if he'd integrated the two parts of himself. She was almost jealous.

The clanging and screaming of the battle receded slowly, and Sara brought the Witchblade down until it lay quietly against her leg. She could feel "Morgaine" falling quiet in her mind. What would it be like to only have _one_ other mind there? she wondered. Did it make it harder to hear, or easier?

Even as the flow of time began to resume, Ian was slipping away, out the door, out of the house, she was sure. Irons was stirring on his "throne", and Sara barely spared him a glance as she gathered herself to leave. Part of her wanted to chase after Ian, but the rational part, the cop, knew she'd never be able to catch him if he didn't want to be caught. He was still in possession of stolen property, and really ought to be brought in on charges of theft.

No way in hell was that going to happen, and she knew it.

*****

Two Days Later

As usual, Sara felt Ian's presence at her back before she heard or saw him.

She kept her eyes on her window and didn't turn around. "You really ought to turn yourself in, you know?"

"You said yourself you have no evidence, not even that a crime was committed. You only have Jacqueline's word and a single unreferenced picture to show that Excalibur existed at all."

"That's irrelevant - you still committed a _crime_ , Nottingham."

"As the Witchblade has always been yours, Excalibur has always been mine. I understand that now, Sara. I understand the connection you understand."

The shadows had closed around them, and it seemed like the rest of the world had been pushed away. It was a romantic notion, but the reality of it was far from sweet or comforting. She had the sense that maybe the two of them were the only two real people in the world and that was one of the least comfortable thoughts she'd ever entertained. Nottingham had always drawn her and she'd always known it would be a disastrous idea.

Before, she'd always felt like she was the one standing in the light, while Ian clung to the shadows, but now he was shining before her.

"Maybe you understand that connection even better than me," she mumbled. Ian remained quiet beside her.

She didn't hear him leave. She never heard him leave.

**Author's Note:**

> To my giftee: This was a first for me. Normally, when I do fic for a festival (as opposed to NaNoWriMo, which rarely sees the light of day) I write 5 Times, or short vignettes, or something else that's primarily character introspection. This one didn't want to do that, and quickly turned into an actual *story*. One that really could be a full novel all on it's own, but time constraints demanded some condensation. I took some liberties with the comic and show mythologies, as well as Arthurian mythology, but I hope that the end result is still an enjoyable, intriguing story, and that it helps make your Yuletide just a little bit brighter!
> 
> To my betas: Many thanks to my lovely beta-readers, who will at least temporarily remain nameless. But you are appreciated and loved!


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